1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for tracking the location of individuals, such as students entering or leaving a classroom.
2. General Background
For many educational and other institutions, tracking attendance can be a time-consuming and tedious chore. Typically, a teacher takes attendance manually, by asking each student to state “here” when his or her name is called, or by scanning the classroom to determine which students are present. The teacher then writes the information down, and it is transmitted to the school administration, often by hand. If a student enters the class late, after attendance has been taken, the teacher must take note of that fact, and interrupt teaching to update his or her attendance records.
This traditional method of tracking attendance suffers from a number of drawbacks. The process is tedious, time-consuming, and subject to human error. Like all paper-based recordkeeping systems, the system is vulnerable to lost or misfiled data.
The consequences of poor attendance recordkeeping can be significant for schools, administrators, and school districts. Throughout the country, average daily attendance (ADA) is a critical statistic that is used to determine school funding. Since school funding is based on ADA figures, schools lose money every time a student is absent. And when poor or inconsistent attendance tracking wrongly indicates that a present student is absent, the school needlessly loses funding.
Additionally, traditional attendance tracking methods make it difficult to prepare the attendance reports required by governmental agencies. Various agencies require ADA and other data to be reported in particular formats, but the traditional methods of tracking attendance do not provide an easy way to prepare these reports.
At least one automated attendance monitoring system has already been developed, and this system uses student-specific identity tags or cards and wireless readers to track the physical location of students. See U.S. patent application No. 2003/0197607. But this system does not provide any verification means for ensuring the integrity of the attendance data. Errors could arise for a number of reasons, such as if a student forgets his or her card, or if students trick the previous system by swapping tags or carrying tags for absent friends. Also, the previous system could not generate reports or export data in the various formats required by the school administration and governmental agencies, nor did it provide any ability for teachers to generate instant attendance reports.
Therefore, there is a need for an automated attendance monitoring system that not only counts and identifies tags or cards as they enter or leave a classroom, but that also has robust means for ensuring the integrity of the attendance data, and that has the ability to prepare customized attendance reports for use by governmental agencies and others.